Saturday, February 12, 2011

Its hard to pick one thing from all the things that happened during our last dinner party. But as my creative team would tell me....please, just tell us the single most important take away from the night, the thing that was the most powerful, the one that sticks through and hits you at the core, the most memorable, the one idea that will stay in your short, medium, long term memory. With that in mind, for me, the story of our big 60 people dinner party was one about faith and trust.

Much more than aversion to risk lay the big question of whether or not we could really see this project all the way through and if so, what it all would truly look like at the end. Did people have enough faith in our project to pay pal us, commit to the event, put it in their calendar almost a month in advance, and show up with an open mind? Besides the love and utter respect I have for Felipe and his talent in the kitchen, could he really pull it off and serve 240 beautiful dishes? What about me? Did I have enough faith in myself, enough to control the tension and stress? Could I really see this through even if the unexpected got in the way? And finally, was Worth Kitchen the real deal, could its essence peek through even amongst the now larger crowds of people? Or would it show its face as yet another New York foodie event? So as you can see, for me the strong emotions leaned much more towards the "pre-event"; the unexpected, "anything could happen", "anything could go wrong" part of the spectrum. And now seeing it in retrospect, I think faith was exactly the thing that got us through it all. Both faith and trust became the crucial elements that allowed everything to come together. And the lesson of the night was that the greatest, most breakthrough ideas, the kick ass projects, those small businesses that make it big, much beyond having a groundbreaking idea needed to have people who believed it could really happen. So the magical thing about the night was that it was all tied together with a thread of faith, and for us to grow and keep transforming into bigger things, it will have to be exactly that element of trust that makes it all happen again and again.

Its funny for me to write a post about faith, since I have never been considered what you would call a "Believer". But I got to admit, I believe in Felipe, I believe in Worth Kitchen, and I have all the faith in the world that this project will help us grow in ways we never expected. So to all our guests, also true believers of ideas, thank you for joining us and making the night happen. We will hold you dear to our hearts and we hope you form part of many of our next "big steps" to come.